"How old is she?" asked the other toddler’s dad, peering in at MJ through the open door of the bathroom just off the music-class studio. MJ was perched backwards on the toilet, straddling it, and staring intently down into the water, watching.
"Not quite eighteen months."
"You," said the dad, "are one of those parents I hate."
"It was her idea!" I protested. "If it were up to me, I would have waited for warmer weather!"
Mary Jane is the second of my babies to become suddenly interested in toileting, all at once. She wanted to sit on the toilet last week. It became supremely important that we keep the bathroom doors closed 24-7, as she’s not very sure-footed and has fallen in a few times — I’m afraid she’ll go in head first! Fortunately I managed to convince her that a potty is just as good a place to sit, even if it is a bit less tidy.
The first hurdle has been passed: if she is allowed to run around the house naked, she will run to a potty when she needs to go. (The only exception is if she happens to be standing on a stepstool or sitting on a kitchen chair. It seems the effort of climbing down without falling is too much for her to manage with a full bladder. Puddles have ensued.)
The second hurdle has been passed: if she is placed on a toilet, even an unfamiliar one, she will try to eliminate, and often does. The key here is to put her on backwards (facing the lid). She’s still pretty little and her bottom falls in, but if she’s facing backward she can grab onto the back of the seat and keep her balance well.
The third hurdle has been passed: She has found a way to tell me "I need to go." She pronounces it "POE-ee." She likes sign, too, and a few times she has made the sign for "wet" (which she knows from Signing Time, I guess, because I’ve never really used it with her much — or maybe the boys taught her?) She used to make it only after she wet her diaper, but it’s starting to precede the wetting by enough time to serve as a warning.
Hurdle number four is in progress: At home, getting her to wear underwear, taking it off when (and only when) she needs to eliminate. She was very happy to get a dozen pairs of panties, and spent a whole day changing from pink ones to blue ones to yellow ones for no apparent reason other than the variety. There was a bit of a backfire when she refused to wear any other clothes, apparently because they impeded her view of the lovely new panties. Several days later she was refusing to put them on at all. She still seems to have mixed feelings about wearing them.
I’m still diapering her when we go out. If it were spring, it’d be a lot easier, but it’s freaking cold out there right now, and it is too much trouble (a) to remove layers and layers of clothing quickly when she communicates a need to go and (b) to deal with a wetting that soaks through several layers of clothes including the snowsuit.
No real reason to bring this up other than a snapshot of life today.
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